A message to people who identify as allies to the trans community.

This message isn’t to all allies of the trans community, only to those who use misogyny as a weapon against people who are anti trans, please if you want to be an ally cut that shit out, it is doing harm and no good will come of it however good your intentions may or may not be.

By reinforcing patriarchy with misogynistic comments you are showing yourself as no true ally to our community. Trans women identify as female, we identify as the class woman, ergo when you allow your brain to be overridden by your anger and say sexist shit you aren’t just belittling the person you are arguing with, your actions also impact directly on those you seek to defend.

Furthermore reinforcing patriarchy makes it harder for trans men to be accepted as not the gender they were mistakenly assigned at birth by reinforcing the very power structures that make transition difficult, and identifying their gender label they were incorrectly assigned at birth as if it is somehow inferior. This also do a hell of a lotta good for those who identify non binary either. So please please please think before you post , we do not need more enemies, and if we are going to convince people we speak the truth about who we are and want anybody to believe us the last thing we need is to allow sexism to speak for us.

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11 Comments

Here I am, thinking before I post. And here I am again, posting, having thought it through. Again.
I do not “identify” as an ally to you or to your delusional, woman-hating bull shit.
Women exist. Females exist. Nothing you do will make a male into a female, and nothing will make women invisible. This is nothing to do with “binary” or other crap you have filled your head with.
I’m not happy with my gender stereotype either. You wouldn’t be if you were born female in this world.
But instead of denying who I am, I have spent a lifetime fighting to make the world safe for actual women for Lesbians, and all females. What have YOU and YOUR people done?
You’ve tried to make me and my experience, my reality, and my story into a myth. You believe that it’s all on the outside–a hairdo, some makeup, high heels and other crap that has been foisted on women something to be cherished and loved.
You have sought to make women and the fact that they have suffered at the hands of men insignificant. Nothing. Invisible.
You have made sexism into a fine art, which you practice daily.
You have made feminism into a joke.
You have made being female a joke.

Take your ‘gender indentity and YOU go ‘die in a fire,’ YOU are the scum. YOU are the misogynist.

We will fight you until the end of the world. You will never win. We are the 51%.

whoah, mind stepping off here a little? the vitriol exhibited here would strip paint, and were the wishes for a painful death really needed?
If rather than wading in on the attack you actually bothered to read a single thing I wrote you would know these things.
1. I think gender roles are bullshit, a social prison that destroys everything it touches.
2. my transitioning has absolutely nothing to do with gender roles, it has plenty to do with correcting a body which is slowly destroying me and has been for years, surgery drastic as it may seem is a way to escape a personal hell that has been lifelong.
3. I believe every trans person should have the right to medical transition, if you dealt with the situations I dealt with every night, talking to kids who have been treated like scum for not fitting a gender role, telling them they do not necesarrily need to transition to be themselves, that their bodies do not need to define their place in life. THEN you would understand the difference when you met a trans person, so full of shame about who they are they would usually sooner end their lives than shame their family by seeking help for gender issues. Do you get that? These are peoples sons and daughters, peoples husbands or wives, they consider ending their lives to be preferable to seeing a therapist and ending up subjected to attitudes of hatred by people they love or total strangers in the street.
4. I believe in depsychopathologisation of trans people, thdere is a tonne of evidence emerging relating to hormonal exposure pre birth, neurological pathway development and a few other issues that completely show that a persons identity is formed prior to social impacts . HOWEVER this does not mean I support gender roles, roles unlike identity are a result of social conditioning and should be changed. By psychopathologising a persons identity problems emerge, such as the psychological communities tendency to encourage people to fit neatly into formed social categories, this results in a process of transition having a compulsory in role period, enshrining the period of living full time in a stereotypical female manner in law. This needs to change, medical transition is to treat a physical condition, the real life test changes nothing and makes us all seem like cliches.
5. Yeah I fit in role soooo well, I’vew worn heels once in my life, despised em so much I had a bonfire in the garden that night, I do wear my hair long, that much is true , but that is because when you are shaved bald as a shaming method it tends to have an impact on ya. As for makeup I try to avoid that junk like the plague, it’s opressive to human beings, tested on animals, and never vegan. I don’t wear that shit and never needed it, just like my mother, and any other self respecting activist out there.
6. every transsexual knows what you are saying when you repeatedly misgender us, it’s cruel, spiteful, vindictive, and highly triggering, ands we are already subjected to it every step of transition WE KNOW ALREADY GET THAT THROUGH YOUR SKULL, physical transition is about correcting a medical condition to the point where we can bfeel comfortablde in our own skin, it has fuck all to do with sex, I do my damndest to stay the hell away from wbw spaces as surely as a gay man avoids setting foot in westboro baptist church, Only like phelps and his mob you bring your hatred to us, this post was never adressed to you yet you feel that wishing my death is a proportional response to it. How is asking to be treated like a human being equal to any other invisiblising you? by my being there to provide support at protests against closures of domestic abuse shelters in my region despite never using them and despite knowing no trans person ever can under current uk law. By asking people to step off during the radfem 2012 debacle and let you hold your meeting in peace?

If this was your caqlm collected response I dread to think what your gut response was.

Daniel said,

To the original poster – KittyBarber – you should read Laurie Penny’s take on transphobia within feminism. Following de Beauvoir, she writes “Not a single person on this planet is born a woman. Becoming a woman, for those who willingly or unwillingly undertake the process, is torturous, magical, bewildering – and intensely political.” Why would you not ally with and show solidarity to those most oppressed by patriarchy? http://www.thefword.org.uk/features/2009/12/cis_feminists_s

Everyone who can read has used that tired old fragment by Beauvoir. She is hardly the Voice of Feminism. Perhaps you should read a little more widely about radical feminism–but of course you won’t–what am I thinking?

I am not an ally. I only make alliances with those who share with me a common cause. The trans* phenomenon is not compatible with feminism; in fact, the two are diametrically opposed. If you wish to understand why this is so–and I am quite sure you do not–there is plenty of material out there, we are not keeping it a secret.

And the trans* phenomenon is unrelated to gay and Lesbian issues, as well. Yet you, they, have used and ridden with for free the organizations and institutions that we built over the years. And contributed–what, exactly?

NOTHING. Exactly.

I will not play the ‘who is most oppressed’ game with you or anyone. We don’t have to. We don’t need another poor oppressed bunch of men to take care of.

Women everywhere are waking up and fighting back. In another generation or two, surgery and drugs to treat a mental condition will be seen for what it truly is: a horrible mistake on the part of the medical establishment that mutilates and poisons whole human bodies unnecessarily for monetary gain.

As for what we are doing. Helping protest cuts against local domestic abuse shelters, pushing to remove sexism from the animal rights movement, attending demos against FGM , All the while setting up a protest group that will aid and act as medics for ANYBODY who is injured executing their right to protest for a good cause. Meanwhile in my own transition I am refusing any of the stereotypical trappings of femininity as for your comment on high heels, I never wear heels preferring vegan doc martins. I am doing everything in my power to change the transition system to get rid of ingrained sexism.

Meanwhile you treat me like part of some monolithic entity that doesn’t really work when less than 50000 of us exist in a world population of six billion six hundred two million two hundred twenty-four thousand one hundred seventy-five of which three billion three hundred one million one hundred twelve thousand eighty-seven are women.

kitty barber your logic erases peoples lived realities, prioritises your voice over another human beings bodily autonomy, is based on arguements decades out of date completely ignoring scientific data and established fact proven countless times by people with years of experience in caring for people. Your entire arguement is based upon your belief my actions are taken to defy gender roles, a complete fallasy , my transition is nothing to do with roles, hell I work my hardest to demolish gender roles every day of my life as I believe they are a social construction not a product of our evolution. However you ask an amputee why their missing limb itches, they will tekll you they just KNOW IT’S STILL THERE EVEN IF IT ISN’T. The human mind knows our body, if it is wrong it feels wrong, I’ve known this since I was first able to remember, try getting to the trutrh rather than assuming you already know it , you’ll have a far better success rate in debates that way.

Allie said,

You know what, what have YOU done for feminism? Based on a quick google search of your name, I’ve found at least 8 instances – other than this one – where you’ve taken the time to write about, or you’ve been seen by others as a significant enough participant in to name, trans denial and exclusion; meanwhile the only instance I can find where you’ve so much as touched any other gender-related issue without using it as a stick (or straw person) to hit trans people with is signing a few petitions on change.org.